Born to Fight (3 page)

Dad wouldn’t suffer a mental son, but when he was twelve it all bubbled over for Steve. He couldn’t help but talk nonsense to himself, usually quietly, because if Dad caught him he’d cop a mighty wailing, but sometimes loudly and maniacally. Much later Steve would be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Maybe it was because he had his head slammed into the wall one too many times. I’m no doctor, but I do know about people getting smashed in the head.

At that time, though, the one who was quickly starting to slide away from life was Victoria. Everything that was happening to her had become too much. All that torture, all the shame – she couldn’t live with it anymore.

Vic wanted to get away from existence and wherever oblivion could be found – booze, pills, petrol, solvents – she’d go there with no hesitation. She was heading to the
darkest of cul-de-sacs until, at fifteen, she found an avenue of escape. And it wasn’t one within, but without.

Initially she looked for ways to extend her time away from home. The school day finished at 3 pm, and when she came home Dad would usually be waiting for her, checking her pants, saying that if any of the boys at school ever had their way with her, there’d be hell to pay. After that he’d often exert his dominance, like an animal.

Victoria thought that if she could get to 5 or 6 pm, and if the threat of boys at school was removed, perhaps things might go differently for her. With Dad’s consent she quit school and took a job as a machinist at a factory. From there a plan took form.

With money she could escape and get her own place. She wasn’t able to keep any of the money she earned at the factory, though, as her wages went straight into Dad’s bank account. But maybe she could do some extra hours, and the company would allow her to have that money go into another account?

Her work agreed. The escape was on. Victoria worked, earned, found a room and set a date. Then, just before she was about to leave, the old man found her second bank book. You probably know enough about the old man now to know how he reacted – but Victoria held fast. She was too close to give up.

Eventually Dad offered an olive branch: Victoria would give him all the money in the second account, and he would let her leave. Knowing she’d already paid her bond and advance rent to her new landlord, Vic agreed.

She always knew Dad wouldn’t give her up so easily, so she planned to leave without him knowing. When, one day, he came home to find her packed and ready to leave, the shit hit the fan.

Victoria was scared then. I’m not sure he could have done anything worse than what she’d already had to go through and, besides, she was so close to getting away. She’d conceived of life after Dad.

Despite the fact that sibling solidarity was usually in short supply in that fucked-up house, she asked us boys to escort her out of the house, and we agreed. Steve and John made the decision – I was still far too small to defy my dad. Even though they never said it, I’m pretty sure they were proud to finally be able to help.

Victoria left the house with the three of us flanking her as though we were a close protection unit – John and Steve in front, facing Dad, and me, the smallest, behind. John and Steve told Dad that Victoria was leaving and, if he tried to stop her, he was the one who was going to get the beating. It was the first time any of us had defied our father, and the first time we’d ever physically challenged him.

I was still a little kid, but Steve and John were filling out and becoming strong, especially Steve, who was starting his teenage years. The old man could have beaten any one of us then, but not all of us. He had no choice but to let Vic go.

As soon as my sister left the house, Dad jumped in his ute to go after her. Victoria had arranged a lift from the milk boy, Grant, who was sweet on her, and sometimes used to leave flowers with the milk. Grant wasn’t due yet, though, so she hid under a tree on a street near ours.

Victoria watched that ute go up and down the surrounding streets until, to her great relief, she saw another familiar vehicle, the one owned by Grant the milk boy.

Vic got away.

I’d love to be able to tell you that Victoria’s story was a happy one after that, but it wasn’t. Not all of it, anyway. She did survive, though, and survives to this day, and that’s something. I know now that growing up like we did, that really does count for something.

When I was little, I couldn’t really recognise how I felt. My kids these days can tell you if they’re sad, or happy, or hopeful, or disappointed, or whatever – in fact, some days they won’t shut up about it – but it wasn’t like that then. It wasn’t like that for me, anyway.

When I was a kid, I could tell you when I was hungry, or in physical pain, but besides that I probably wouldn’t have
been able to tell you much about how I felt. We didn’t talk like that in my house, and we didn’t think like that. I didn’t really have an emotional vocabulary until later in life.

If I could articulate myself properly when I went to school, I probably would have told you that I was always embarrassed. As soon as I had classmates with normal lives, I was embarrassed by that house, by the old man, by the fact that we didn’t have any food and, most of all, those rumours that were going around.

I used to cry on the way to primary school. I’d be dressed in Steve’s or John’s hand-me-down clothes, and sometimes even Victoria’s, knowing that I had all those miserable hours ahead of me, often obsessing about the worst part of the school day: lunchtime.

When the rest of the kids were going to be tucking into sandwiches, Fruit Boxes and Milky Ways, I was going to be sitting there on my own, hungry and bitter. Sometimes Dad would save me by coming in and dropping off some lunch for me, but it very rarely happened. That’d be one of the few times I’d look forward to seeing him.

Sometimes the teachers and other kids would pity me and throw me a sandwich half or some fruit. I appreciated the food, but never the pity. I was never, ever in for the pity. I guess I must have felt pride then, too. You can’t have embarrassment without pride.

I had a funny relationship with most of my primary school mates. We weren’t really peers, so we couldn’t ever really be mates. If you saw my school photos, I was a scowl in a sea of smiles. I didn’t have much to smile about.

It was at primary school that I first developed a temper that could burn a hole in the floor. Add that temper to the fact that there was only one authority figure at the time that meant anything – a teacher’s stern words and detentions meant jack shit compared to the old man’s fists – and I wasn’t destined to have much of an academic career.

For me, school wasn’t a place of learning and enrichment, it was just a place I had to be at from Monday to Friday. The teachers had to be endured, as did other kids, but it did have benefits, like if someone was going to get fucked up at school, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me.

I remember the first time I had a go at someone at school. It was this kid, Alex, who, in the third or fourth grade class, said something that got my back up. I don’t remember exactly what he said to me, but I remember desperately wanting to say something sharp and cutting back to him. My mind was fuzzy, though. Nothing came but frustration. My annoyance grew and grew until I picked this poor little dude up with both hands and hurled him across the classroom.

He landed like a bag of garbage, and there was a sound in the room.

Ooooooohhhhhhh.

I remember how light that kid felt, how small. I remember the dawning realisation that I was stronger than this kid, and possibly stronger than all of them. I hadn’t been strong in my house but, at school, there were possibilities of physical domination.

Throwing that little smart-ass across the room felt good. I didn’t feel any remorse, and I didn’t give a shit about what was going to happen to me when the teachers turned up on the scene.

I just remember feeling the power of it. This was probably the first time in my life that I’d felt empowered. It might have also been the first time that the embarrassment of my existence started to recede.

I realised at primary school that I had no verbal defence for anything anyone said to me. I
was
wearing girl’s clothes, and I
was
as hungry as a stray dog. I
was
a poor-ass coconut (New Zealand’s favourite racist taunt for Polynesians), living in a house of abuse and beatings. That was all true. But I could also pick you up and throw you across the room if I really wanted to. That was a pretty good equaliser as far as I was concerned.

It wasn’t like I was accepted after I started asserting myself physically at school, or even respected, but when I wanted people to avoid me, then they would. That would do for me.

I didn’t really hate primary school. Some of the teachers were kind to me – usually middle-aged Pakeha women with sensible shoes and mid-length hair – and I preferred the sense and structure of those school days to the chaos of home.

I really hated high school, though. I guess, overall, primary school is a journey towards high school, a journey all us kids were taking together. High school, though, that was a journey into the early days of adult life. Some of us wouldn’t be completing that journey yet. Some of us would end up in a void between school and life that would cast us as outsiders.

There were a couple of things I liked to do at high school, it just turned out that none of those things happened in a classroom. I liked to sleep in the big tree out on the oval (the one where I could see if Dad was coming for me); I liked jimmying 50-cent pieces out of the tennis court vending machine; and I also liked to play rugby league.

League was a natural fit for me. I was big for my age, strong, quick on my feet and unfazed by the licks that you had to take playing the game. The boys used to play
rugby at lunchtime. Sometimes I’d join the game, sometimes I’d ruin the game. When I wanted to ruin the game, I’d take the ball and slowly walk back to my try line. Then, even more slowly, I’d walk towards the opposition try line, daring someone to try to tackle me. If anyone ever did, they’d get their ass beaten.

It was the world’s stupidest way of playing rugby, especially for someone like me who really enjoyed competition and was genuinely good at the game. I can justify a lot of what I did as a kid, but I can’t for the life of me remember why I played rugby like that. It was a dumb way of playing the game, and an even worse way of making friends but, oddly, I did.

When I met Johnno, he was new to our school, having been kicked out of his class for belting a teacher. Maybe he didn’t understand the way I played rugby, maybe he did; either way, when he and his friend Derek saw me walking slowly with the ball, they ran straight at me. After they bounced off me, I whipped both their asses. Johnno didn’t care. First he fought back and when he couldn’t anymore, he just stood there and took it. In him I saw familiarity; this wasn’t the first beating this kid had ever suffered. Right there and then on the oval, we became friends.

It was with Johnno that I first made myself known to the cops. I’d been coveting all the things the other kids
took for granted my whole life: food, shoes, bikes, T-shirts, video games. Now, with Johnno, I realised all I needed to do to get these things was just go out there and grab them.

The first time the cops picked me up was for stealing shoes. I was at one of the malls near my house when Johnno noticed that one of the shoe shops had an open window that led to the car park. While I was handing a pair of shoes – Timberlands, I think – out to Johnno, a couple of big, meaty man-hands clamped down on me. The store security guard held me at the shop until the police turned up. The cops threatened me with this or that, but I didn’t give a shit about whatever they were going to be levelling at me; I was only worried about how badly I was going to get beaten when my old man found out.

That scene was repeated over and over again, and soon I even stopped worrying about how badly I was going to get beaten when Dad had to turn up at the cop shop. Those beatings were notes in a symphony. In trouble with the police or not, I was always in line to get the shit beaten out of me, regardless of what was going on.

In my latter high school years, school started to become physically unbearable. If I went to all the classes I was supposed to go to, then I’d spend all of my time being bored and angry at school, or terrorised and despairing at home.

Fuck that. I was going to carve some time out for me. By the time I went to secondary school, you would’ve been more likely to find me at the school grounds on the weekend than you would’ve during the week. It was at school on a Saturday where I met Simi and Eti, a couple of tough Samoan kids who were a bit older than me, and a little bit further down the path of delinquency. After I met those guys things began to get a little bit out of control. I hadn’t been hanging out with them for long when I started turning up in the dock of the children’s court.

‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I’ve learned.’ Blah blah blah.

It was also then that I started to fight. Stealing was a pretty decent way to gain respect in my South Auckland circles, but the best way to get respect was being able to scrap.

I lost my first fistfight. I can’t remember what it was about, which isn’t surprising because most fights in those days weren’t about much more than a willingness to throw down. I do remember walking away wondering why people made such a big deal out of it, though. There was a little bit of activity; fists flew, I got hit a lot, he didn’t. It probably wasn’t even the worst ass-kicking I’d had that week. When it was all over, I knew I had absolutely nothing to fear from fistfighting.